ift or by means of the change in the position of the vessels; and
he no longer thought of _that_. Fortune must be trusted to, in some
measure; and on he went, Roswell always closely following.

The early hours of that eventful night were intensely dark. Nevertheless,
Daggett stood down towards the icy range, using no other precautions than
shortening sail and keeping a sharp look-out. Every five minutes the call
from the quarter-deck of each schooner to "keep a bright look-out" was
heard, unless, indeed, Daggett or Roswell was on his own forecastle, thus
occupied in person. No one on board of either vessel thought of sleep. The
watch had been called, as is usual at sea, and one half of the crew was at
liberty to go below and turn in. What was more, those small fore-and-aft
rigged craft were readily enough handled by a single watch; and this so
much the more easily, now that their top-sails were in. Still, not a man
left the deck. Anxiety was too prevalent for this, the least experienced
hand in either crew being well aware that the next four-and-twenty hours
would, in all human probability, be decisive of the fate of the voyage.

Both Daggett and Gardiner grew more and more uneasy as the time for the
moon to rise drew near, without the orb of night making its appearance. A
few clouds were driving athwart the heavens, though the stars twinkled as
usual, in their diminutive but sublime splendour. It was not so dark that
objects could not be seen at a considerable distance; and the people of
the schooners had no difficulty in very distinctly tracing, and that not
very far ahead, the broken outlines of the chain of floating mountains. No
alpine pile, in very fact, could present a more regular or better defined
range, and in some respects more fantastic outlines. When the bergs first
break away from their native moorings, their forms are ordinarily somewhat
regular; the summits commonly resembling table-land. This regularity of
shape, however, is soon lost under the rays of the summer sun, the wash of
the ocean, and most of all by the wear of the torrents that gush out of
their own frozen bosoms. A distinguished navigator of our own time has
compared the appearance of these bergs, after their regularity of shape
is lost, and they begin to assume the fantastic outlines that uniformly
succeed, to that of a deserted town, built of the purest alabaster, with
its edifices crumbling under the seasons, and its countless unpeopled
st